The resurrection continues: VesperArcade looks at Nash’s changes for Street Fighter V’s April balance patch

VesperArcade continues his series of discussing the character changes coming to Street Fighter V in the late April balance patch, this time looking at Nash. Following the massive success of players such as Razer’s Infiltration, Yukadon and LI Joe in Season 1, Capcom significantly nerfed the “Paradoxical Avenger” in Season 2–to the point where all but Red Bull’s Bonchan have pretty much abandoned him. In an attempt to remedy this–as well as further diversify him from Guile–Capcom will be providing Nash with a few buffs in the upcoming update. Starting with one of the most notable, Nash’s forward dash will have its total movement frames reduced from 19 to 18 frames, making it faster–but still slower than Season 1’s 17 frames.

Now there is kind of a backstory on why Capcom’s messing around with Nash’s dash. Basically, when Nash dashes forward, he actually doesn’t animate himself moving forward until the 8th frame. So when the human eye sees him moving towards them, they don’t really react to Nash until his dash is already halfway done. That was a huge issue, because the fastest dashes in this game are 15 frames, and in Season 1 when Nash had a 17 frame dash, it seemed like 9 frames. The problem is, they didn’t just stop there. Not only did they nerf Nash’s dash by 2 frames, they also made it so Nash moves forward 1 frame faster. It was overkill, I feel, for Capcom to nerf it down to 19, so they just found the middle ground.

Next, VesperArcade explains how the standing heavy punch changes will restore some of the move’s original utility as a Crush Counter, as the hitboxes have been restored to their Season 1 sizes, which is in line with their goal of making him the more offensive Sonic Boomer.

Nash’s crouching medium kick was already improved in Season 2, by having it’s hit advantage when canceled into his V-Trigger, Sonic Move – Hide, increased from +3 to +4, allowing him to link a light attack afterwards. With it increasing to +5, he will now be able to go into Side Knee Attack, which can go into hard Sonic Scythe, to improve his meterless damage.

VesperArcade closes by giving his final analysis on Nash’s changes:

So my final verdict for these changes is slightly buffed. Nash’s forward dash buff has helped his crippled mobility, however I think Capcom could’ve made it 2 frames faster since we have 6.5 frames of input delay and he moves forward 1 frame sooner. Medium Sonic Scythe is a better neutral tool now if he safely spaces it. Standing HP can be used in neutral now, with a high reward if it Crush Counters and crouching MK will help his neutral when he has V-Trigger up. EX Sonic Scythe gives him a reversal option, but I still don’t think that helps when he doesn’t have a 3-frame normal. Obviously Capcom’s goal is to make Nash much different than Guile. They wanted Nash to be the rushdown character in Season 2. I think these buffs make sense to help his offense. I still think his V-Trigger got hit a little too hard, and he does have some issues, compared to what the top tier characters are now. But I don’t think Nash is that bad of a character. When they nerfed him, they gave him different tools to change the kind of character he was. I feel like Nash is in an OK spot right now, and I don’t think he’s in as bad a spot as some characters that were nerfed, with nothing given back to compensate.

You can see the full video above, along with coverage of the other patch notes and PC CFN beta discoveries below:

Source: VesperArcade


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